What’s in Your Envelope?

If there were an event like the Super Bowl that capped the college admissions season, then it would probably be Thursday night — beginning at 5 p.m. on the East Coast.

At that time, the eight institutions of the Ivy League and other highly selective colleges and universities, including Duke and Johns Hopkins, are scheduled to make available, online, their decisions on most of the applications submitted this year in the main admissions round (usually submitted on or around Jan. 1).

As has been the case on big decision nights in years past, we’d like to convene the equivalent of a virtual, communal kitchen table on The Choice blog.

To this year’s applicants: please use the comment box below to tell us what the colleges are telling you. Are you happy with your choices, as they now come into sharp relief? Disappointed? Or are you not sure what to feel, especially in the case of those of you who were neither rejected nor accepted but offered spots on the waiting list?

And now that you’re the one making the decisions, what factors will be front of mind — especially in this challenging economy?

Please let us know.

And for those readers who passed through this process long ago — or have yet to do so — we would like to hear from you as well, in particular with some well-chosen words of advice, reassurance and perspective.

Finally, you need not wait until Thursday night to begin writing in. You can do so right now. We at The Choice are well aware that there are about 2,000 four-year colleges and universities in the United States, most of which have long since told this year’s high school seniors where they stand.

My son already has all his results, happily all acceptances, as he (with our help) made a thoughtful and realistic list that only included one true ‘reach.’ However, he is very worried for many of his friends tonight, several of whom have NO acceptances yet — because their parents insisted that they apply only to the most elite schools. My heart goes out to these kids, many of whom are brilliant. What stress they are feeling compared to my kid, who is deciding between his four top choices.

Parents of future seniors: Wake up and do what is truly in your child’s best interest. Make sure they apply to a range of schools that would be a good fit for them. It’s not about the car sticker. Don’t their last months of high school be ruined by feelings of failure.

This process has been really tough for me. I just keep asking myself to whom America’s educational system lends itself. College admissions committees should be asking themselves, “What does it take to nourish students who are curious, creative, and industrious?” not “who performed the best during a discriminating four-hour test one of Saturday of his or her life?” There is so much hype about getting accepted at the best schools in the country because it acts as a certain status symbol. Please — wake up and smell the roses. There is so much more to life than the ivy league. There are hundreds of fabulous schools. Why is everything such a competition? And everybody will do great.

Remember, whether you are crying tears of joy or sorrow about your admissions decisions, you are not defined by the institution that awards your college degree. Getting in doesn’t mean life’s doors are now open to you without effort and drive. Being rejected doesn’t mean your dreams are suddenly and forever dashed. Sure, celebrate or mourn for a bit, but then realize that the truly important stuff — the love of family, the support of close friends, the desire to learn and explore — really hasn’t change at all. No matter what your envelopes say, you have survived a lengthy and often exhausting process of self-reflection and you should be commended. Well done. The world eagerly awaits your contributions.

I feel for all of you anxiously awaiting word from the top schools today. A year ago, my daughter was waiting for news from five schools. By this point, I was upset with myself that I had encouraged her to believe she could get accepted by one of her favorites, given the grim reality. The end result? Two rejections, one wait list, two acceptances. My daughter sobbed for 20 minutes when she was done checking her status at each of the schools- tears of happiness, but more of relief that it was all over. And now, a year later, one very happy freshman at Columbia. Good luck to all! I’m so glad I have a few years before I go through it again with my son!

The frustration of watching students who all apply to the same overlapping schools is crazy. If a student got into one of them, he/she tended to get into them all. As for my son, he was waitlisted at most of them. The overlaps that effected us are: Northeastern, Penn State, Fordham, Va. Tech, Delaware, Lehigh. Similarly, merit money is given to all of the same students … highly qualified for these schools and under-qualified for the next-step-up group of schools. While flattering to this group, there are a bunch of students who would flourish just as well at these schools that have to wait, and are offered no money. Early Action is a disservice, I think. There is no commitment on the kids’ part, and the slots are just taken up earlier… the wait is longer for the pile of deferred students…. I have learned a lot about this process, not all of it good. I hope the colleges get some sort of eye-opener, the way they dote on the same group of students. It’s a sham. Many of the kids just applying to have back-ups, when they were first-choice spots for my son. Happily, my son will attend Smeal at Penn State. The heck with the rest of you schools!

I look forward to the day when kids and parents are not blindly clamouring to get into ivies and the like. Don’t tell me it’s not all about status. Don’t tell me you want to go there because the students are all so amazing that through some osmosis it will help you become amazing also. Dont tell me you have to go there because you can’t get a good job without the networking and the fancy school name on your resume. That’s mostly a bunch of brainwashing, so that you and your parents are too afraid not to pay $60K a year. Its marketing. Just like sugary cereal to kindergartenrs.
Okay, if you are poor enough and are getting good aid, congratulations, go for it. But if not, do not go into debt! Realize you are being sold a story. Chose an affordable option and with pride you can say you turned down Yale or Duke. Sure, they would have been great experiences, but it’s time to get real.

Applause for the parents who help their kids build a selection set based on the students’ interests, not on the schools’ rankings. It is a curse of the Common Application that students are able to conveniently apply to a dozen or more schools with the click of the mouse. Instead of using the college search to identify which schools offer the programs and campus culture that best fit, students defer making choices until a later stage in the process. Maybe if it was more work at the front end, people would take the educational experience more seriously, and expend less energy stretching for a name-brand school. The quality of the education offered at the top several hundred schools is arguably interchangeable (reputations are, of course, a different matter).

The benefit of my experience from seven years ago when my son, a high honors, high SAT, AP class taking, Eagle Scout, varsity athlete student at a very large public school decided to attend a smaller, not top tier (maybe not even second tier) private college that offered him a full scholarship.

He had a wonderful college experience. He had good relationships with professors who were teachers and not just academics, made good friends, was captain of his team, enjoyed being a big fish in a small pond for a change and graduated summa. Completed two years of Teach for America, is gainfully employed and engaged to a lovely woman he met as an undergrad, as they successfully maintained their relationship through her attendance at medical school. The rank of the college he attended seems not to have mattered in the slightest, and he has no debt burden to keep him from following his dream of working in education.

It might feel crushing to find that a door you expected to be open is closed to you, but there are so many doors!

My son applied to 10 schools below the Ivys and their ilk and got into a few good ones, but I was surprised at some of the rejections and the evidence that his Ivy-level SATs apparently were not as important as his 3.5 GPA at a top public HS in California. I really wonder if these admission committees can distinguish between a GPA at one school and another, where the standards can vary tremendously. The real shocker was his not getting into UC Santa Cruz — when his SAT cum was more than 300 points above the incoming class average! What’s up with that? He was admitted to private schools almost twice as selective on paper as Santa Cruz. There are so many applications now (33,000 at Santa Cruz), the UCs are a total crapshoot, I guess.

I’m a parent going through this for the second time. Fortunately, my daughter was successful in the early action round and withdrew from her other schools. However, I remember well the stress, anxiety, uncertainty that went into the process. The final hours of waiting are excruciating. To the students and parents waiting for decisions today: you will get through this. Some of you with tears, some of you with smiles, but everything will be OK.

Our society puts entirely too much emphasis on where you go to school, and not nearly enough on what you do when you get there. Every major college and university in the United States has top notch professors, researchers, artists and a bevy of intelligent students from a variety of backgrounds. Find them and make the most of these resources.

After you choose your school, please remember: the student who pushes him/herself to learn more, experience more and engage the professors and your intelligent colleagues more, will get infinitely more from their college education than the student who does the minimum to get by. A student from the lowliest state college, who has done this will benefit more from their college experience, and be better prepared for the world a head than the disengaged and disinterested student from the most prestigious private college.

Best of luck to the Class of 2016, where ever you go to College or University.

And parents, be kind to your kids. No matter if they got into their first choice or their fifth. Celebrate with them in some way whether it’s a dinner out or a batch of homemade cookies. Make sure they know that if they did not get into their first choice that you are disappointed FOR them, not disappointed IN them. That’s a big difference and even at 17/18 many kids want their parents to be proud.

If you have researched your “fit” well enough throughout the college process, the “April Fools” feedback will not be surprising to you.

By using tools such as Family Connection and College Board, and consulting with one’s guidance counselor, an applicant should have a pretty good idea whether the schools on his or her college list are reaches, targets or “likelies.” Yes, there is always some element of randomness in the college process, but generally, the results should not come as a huge surprise.

By helping our high school students to research their choices up front, we can help lower the stress and suspense. No one need feel like a “fool” in April!

I agree with Tiger Mom’s comment about overlapping acceptances at Elite Schools. It does seem if a student is accepted at one of them, he/she receives acceptances to all schools in that group. Perhaps the number of applications from a single candidate to Ivy League Schools should be capped at three. This might eliminate some overlap and allow a more diverse student body to attend these institutions.

My oldest is graduating from the University of Wisconsin and was offered a two-year commitment teaching High School Science with Teach for America. My youngest will be attending the Art and Design School at the University of Michigan in the fall on a scholarship. They are Big Ten guys, but I know from their friends that competition for spots at Stanford, Duke and all the Ivies is fierce!
-Big Ten Mom

“All around the world, remarkable young men and women are on edge because today they finally hear of admissions decisions from Yale and a number of other highly competitive universities. So a word of encouragement: No one ever faced longer odds than Paul Lorem, and he made it.”

On today of all days, I think this editorial is insensitive. Some may see this as evidence which heightens the fact that it is easier for a young man from the Sudan (who has faced tremendous odds) to get into a competitive school than it is for a qualified African-American male from a public school in Detroit or Newark.

My experience is hopefully one that none of you will have to face. Your parents would probably discourage my choice, as mine did initially, but it worked out great for me. I was accepted to a few safety schools, and rejected by the places that I really wanted to attend. I chose not to go to college immediately. The “gap year” is of course common in many places, but not in the US. Even my father, who is British (and took a few years between boarding school and university) discouraged it. My parents thought that once I was out in the real world I wouldn’t go back to school. I thought this was ridiculous and argued that being in school is obviously preferable to the real world, which is true. Anyway – it turned out great, and proved to be the very thing I needed. Far from the typical gap year experience of traveling to a far-flung location and working on a farm or doing aid work (all great things to do), I actually moved into a house in Nashville with my friends that I was in a band with. I got a job, and I travelled, but mostly I reassessed what I wanted my college experience to be. The year before, I had applied to prestigious undergraduate film programs. I am a filmmaker (still) and I knew this was what I wanted to do. The best thing about my gap year was that I was able to re-imagine HOW I wanted to do this. It eventually occurred to me that I wanted a more broad education than I would receive at an undergraduate film “conservatory”, so for my next round of applications I applied to liberal arts colleges and some larger universities. Everything really worked out. I attended a great liberal arts college (Sewanee), and studied philosophy, Chinese, anthropology, forestry, political science, and so forth. Last year, I finished my MFA in documentary filmmaking at Stanford. My education changed my life, but it wasn’t the path I envisioned as a high school senior. For me, it took a little time and distance to get on the right track. I’m not suggesting the gap year as a viable alternative to a great safety school, but if your heart isn’t in it, maybe you should take time to rethink where you want to be (and how you want to get there) rather than attending a college you aren’t excited about simply because they accepted you.

I think the hardest part is not just being rejected at face value by these schools, but having to endure the incessant questions posed by teachers and other students: “Were you accepted? Did you get money? Where are you going?” Although all of the people involved in this process are very supportive, it hurts to admit you are rejected from your top choice.
In these times, I feel as if it is almost better to not tell anyone where you are applying–though it’s hard, it will make potential rejections or even waitlists all the more easy.

My son did not get in everywhere he applied, but he got the acceptance that was number one on his list – University of Buffalo for the Aerospace Engineering program. Still waiting on Binghamton, but it’s going to be Buffalo either way.

So, success! And, with two years’ courses already transferred from community college, he’s way ahead (so is mommy’s wallet).

My son and his friends have had a wild ride this admissions year and are happy to have it come to an end. Most of them are very satisfied with their acceptances. Some vignettes (I like reading these sort of things, so I figure someone else will appreciate it, too):

My sons and several of his friends did not get into their first choice schools during the first round of Early Decision. They decided not to gamble with the lower acceptance rates of Regular Decision and instead to lower their sights a little and try ED2 at one of the next tier of schools, where all of them were successful. Would it have made sense to gamble with a broader selection in Regular Decision? Impossible to know, but all of them are very, very happy.

Unlike the rest of the gang, one friend couldn’t bring himself to commit to an Early Decision school – he was mature enough to know that he just didn’t know yet where he wanted to go. Interesting Regular Decision results: He was denied at one school where he would have been pretty sure to get in Early Decision (based on the acceptances of his classmates), but accepted at another school that would have been a statistical reach Early Decision. Go figure. Needless to say, he’s happy, too.

Another friend was deferred Early Admission at her dream school, and actually went up to visit and plead her case with the Admissions Officer for our region. The guy was really lovely and straightforward with her, explaining what the weaknesses of her application were, and when, finally, last week, she was denied, she understood why was okay about it. She’s now probably going to go to one of our excellent state schools and, yes, is absolutely happy about it.

@latexan: “Ivy-level SATs apparently were not as important as his 3.5 GPA at a top public HS in California.”

So true. For all their talk of “holistic evaluation”, these top-tier schools do not walk the talk. And with EA, EDI and now EDII at many schools, kids who don’t feel ready to make early decisions (or who happen to be ordinary kids without any special “hooks”) are being left in the dust, and I don’t just mean by the Ivies. I commend JRF for his thoughtful choice.

The reason that students apply to so many schools is not to collect acceptances, but because they have no idea where they will be accepted. Do you really think that the kids that get accepted to many of the Ivies knew they would get in? From my perspective, it seems that among those who are qualified, acceptances seem arbitrary. Also, if a student is not rich or poor, he/she may have to consider which schools give the best financial aid package.
My daughter was waitlisted at three of her safety schools and has been accepted (via likely letter) to one Ivy and one top-rated LAC. Only time will tell where she will eventually end up since we cannot afford a quarter of a million dollar plus education.